Reflecting on the young people in Tsarist Russia who joined revolutionary organisations knowing that they would almost certainly end up in prison or exile, Trotsky said of them “they were by no means the worst of their generation”. 

His phrase came back to me reading about the two years and 20 months sentences imposed respectively on Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, both aged 22, for throwing soup over the glass protecting Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. This brings to 25 the number of Just Stop Oil protestors who are now in prison. Three more will certainly be joining them as a result of their repeating the same protest on Van Gogh’s work yesterday.  

Self-evidently, it is not possible to build a mass movement against climate change by virtually guaranteeing that everyone who becomes active in it is sent to prison. It is equally obvious that these activists are acting in the interests of everyone who is going to be affected by climate change. 

This sneering comment on the use of prison to defend political repression of peaceful protest in a paper that has opposed every progressive movement until it won summarises the view of a ruling class which has been bought off by climate change denialists: 

“In July, Just Stop Oil’s founder, ­Roger Hallam, and four of his fellow antagonists were handed custodial sentences of record length after disrupting traffic on the M25. This week, equally deserved prison sentences were handed to two activists who threw Heinz tomato soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in 2022. In sentencing the pair, the judge recognised not only the thousands of pounds worth of damage done to the painting’s 17th-century frame, on which the soup acted as a “paint stripper”, but also the harm that might have been done had soup seeped behind the glass.” 

In his sentencing remarks the judge said: “Your harm is at category 1, which means extreme harm to society.” He wasn’t referring to the fossil fuel companies, climate change denialist and their friends in the press. That single sentence shows the complete inhuman irrationality of the campaign of judicial and political persecution of these activists.  

So far, only ten MPs have signed the petition calling for an end to the imprisonment of non-violent protestors. Opposing the jailing of Just Stop Oil activists in a state which has prosecuted nobody for the mass killings at Grenfell is not the same as agreeing with their tactics. However, it is important to support them because the actions being taken against them are part of a process of criminalising dissent. 

You can make a donation to their legal costs and providing books and phone credits for the prisoners here.